Semalt Expert Specifies Email Marketing Myths To Stop Worrying About
With 294 billion emails being sent every day, it is no surprise that you should expect to receive your fair share of promotional emails every week. Statistically, consumers receive about 25 promotional emails every week – this is a fact, but as with any other marketing tactic, this number can be exaggerated.
You should know that email marketing myths rely heavily on averages i.e. billions of emails simplified into a single best practice. It is important to remember that what works for other businesses may not work for you and you should never confuse myths with facts.
The following are 8 email marketing myths debunked by Alexander Peresunko, the Customer Success Manager of Semalt Digital Services:
1. Sending More Emails is a Sure Way to Annoy Your Customers
One common topic on email marketing is email frequency, and according to research, it is the number one reason many people click the unsubscribe button. However, this should not discourage you from sending more than one email a week. If your email marketing campaign is successful, your subscribers will keep reading and take action.
2. Never Send the Same Email Twice
According to data from 2016, 75 percent of people on your newsletter database do not read your email. This may be down to accidental deletion of your email, high email bounce rates or some of your audience being too busy. This means that it is okay to resend emails but only to those who didn't open them the first time. You can also use a different template but with the same content. However, you should follow these tips when resending emails:
- Create a different subject line when resending
- Only resend your most important emails
- Allow 72 hours to pass before resending an email
3. Never Use Spam Keywords in the Subject Line of Your Email
Today's spam filters are not like those used in the early years of email marketing. Current spam filters have new criteria such as reputation that notices past "spam" keywords in your subject line that were immediately flagged some time back i.e. Discount, Free and Save.
4. You should be Concerned with the Number of Unsubscribes
Unsubscribing means that the reader doesn't want to receive your emails anymore. Instead of being concerned, it's actually great news because the readers are cleaning the database for you and thus improving the quality of your email database.
5. Tuesday is the Best Day to Send Emails
There is no good day to send emails. You can get good results when you send emails during workdays and even on weekends especially if you run an e-commerce store. The fact is, many emails are sent during weekdays than weekends.
6. Always Keep Your Subject Line Short
According to Implix, subject lines with more than 25 characters are more likely to be read than those with fewer characters. Instead on emphasizing on character length, come up with an eye-catching subject line, and you will have better email open rates.
7. Open Rates Define Success
90 percent of marketers use open rate as the main metric for a successful email campaign. Open rates do not tell the whole story, i.e. many outlook users have images blocked by default meaning that the open rate won't be successfully and accurately tracked. Also, many mobile users use a text format, and this dampens the reliability of open rate data.
Use other metrics such as leads generated per email and conversion rates for more accurate data.
8. Email Marketing is Dying
Email marketing is the most trusted form of communication and is even becoming more engaging. Email marketing also has a higher ROI compared to display and search engine advertising.
Don't always follow the best practices, test for yourself to define the myths from the facts.